Espinal, Isabel
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Librarian for Afro American Studies, Latin American, Caribbean & Latinx Studies, Native American & Indigenous Studies, Spanish & Portuguese, Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, African Studies
Last Name
Espinal
First Name
Isabel
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American Studies
Arts and Humanities
English Language and Literature
French and Francophone Language and Literature
Italian Language and Literature
Library and Information Science
Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature
Arts and Humanities
English Language and Literature
French and Francophone Language and Literature
Italian Language and Literature
Library and Information Science
Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature
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Introduction
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3 results
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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
Publication Counterspace Support for BIPOC Employees Within a Holistic JEDI Library Framework(2023-01-01) Espinal, Isabel; Graham, Anne; Rios, Maria; Freedman, KatherineThis chapter presents a case study of how an academic library supports Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) employees with funding so these workers can find counterspaces (spaces where they can feel safe in community with other BIPOC who are navigating similar struggles while working in a predominantly white institution). Through its Inclusion, Diversity, Anti-Racism and Equity (IDARE) Committee, the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst Libraries worked to establish a fund for meeting some of the cultural and racial equity needs of library employees who are BIPOC. With a new Woman of Color Dean, the fund transformed into a funding priority and criterion that puts the needs of BIPOC employees at the center, while asking everyone in the library to undertake JEDI work and view all of their work through a JEDI lens. This chapter discusses the “Why” and the “How” of this JEDI initiative, placing it in the context of a larger holistic vision for inclusive librarianship outlined by current and former BIPOC employees and the JEDI vision of the Dean and her leadership team.Publication We've Failed at Diversifying Our Librarian Ranks, Now What ? A Plan for Addressing the "Pipeline" Problem(2018-05-04) Sollinger, Annie; Espinal, Isabel; Smith, Pete; Freedman, KateLike many libraries, at our library, we have tried for many years to racially diversify our profession. One of our librarians even made it to the Library Journal " Movers & Shakers" list for raising awareness of the library profession to students of color through presentations, videos, dinners, and icebreaking activities. But despite our intentions and past efforts, the situation has not improved significantly. Let's face it, we have all failed miserably: currently, the racial composition of librarianship, both at our library and in the librarian profession-at-large, is woefully unrepresentative of the United States’ population. Moreover, despite numerous analyses of this problem over the past decades, the demographics have remained stagnant. For example, for the past decade, our staff of roughly 40 professional librarians has not included any African American librarians. The Institute of Museum and Library Services tweeted a graph in November 2017, showing that the problem is nation-wide (see: https://twitter.com/US_IMLS/status/927922066896146432). Although we might take comfort in knowing that it's not just us — that the profession as a whole has not been able to diversity its ranks — at our library we are not satisfied by the reason that many leaders in our field give for the whiteness of our profession, namely that the issue is "simply" a lack of a diverse MLS holders. At our library, we are attempting to address this problem at the root, by making graduate school in library science more financially accessible to people of color. This past year and a half, a group of library staff have worked out a proposal for a Post-Baccalaureate Diversity Recruitment Fellowship in which participants would have their tuition and educational expenses financially covered while attending library school and working at our library. The aim is to recruit people of color into the field of librarianship, thus increasing the pool of librarians of color both at our library and in the profession at large by removing the financial barrier of the cost of attaining a graduate dress in Library and Information Studies. We will outline the previous approaches as well, so that we can learn collectively about what did not work. For example, over the years, we held recruitment events for students of color; we post our jobs to listservs of the library ethnic caucuses; we have included diversity language in our recruitment and personnel materials. What we have found is that some of the efforts were inconsistent, not fully supported by library administrations, or simply not bold or big enough. There are other reasons that we will also discuss. Takeaways: -A positive new idea – a Diversity Fellowship that has been fleshed out in a proposal template that we will share. -Work on this proposal has established inclusion as a priority for library staff, catching the attention of the Dean who has looked for ways to make this a reality.Publication Kiskeyanas Valientes en Este Espacio: Dominican Women Writers and the Spaces of Contemporary American Literature(2018-05) Espinal, Isabel RWe can learn and gain a lot by putting Dominican women writers at the center of our attention. Yet they rarely have that place. This dissertation looks at Dominican women authors who have lived and written in the United States —Josefina Báez, Marianela Medrano, Yrene Santos, Aurora Arias, Nelly Rosario, Annecy Báez, Ana Maurine Lara, Raquel Cepeda— and how they fit within the spaces of contemporary American society, and more broadly within world flows of peoples and cultural productions. I draw on the theories and methodologies of Gloria Anzaldúa and her generation of feminists of color, as well as subsequent decolonial, indigenous and Afro-diasporic thinkers, including Marta Moreno-Vega. In heeding María Lugones’ call for playfulness, I play with the very words space and place, while exploring how space and place play out in the works and lives of these writers and how sexism, racism, and colonialism have shaped their lives, their works and the lives of their works —the birth, development and dissemination of their works. I include storytelling about my own Kiskeyana life and try to decolonize the very language of analysis: Latina/o becomes Latinx, Dominican becomes Kiskeyana, America becomes Abya Yala and even space and time become egun. I also play around with Latinx, feminist and indigenous research and writing methodologies like Participatory Action Research and the use of the second person, as when I address you, the reader. These writers offer so much more than any of our contemporary limited critical language and vision can encompass. At the same time, I argue for the application of some language and labels that are not normally applied to Dominican women writers, such as nature writers and mystical writers. I urge you to visit and experience their writings directly and hope that the dissertation achieves that end if nothing else, but I also have in mind the needs of you who will be reading this dissertation, whoever you are, so I hope that the dissertation also serves as a space of reading and learning pleasure for you—and possibly healing.